As numbers of mobile communication device users and mobile service subscribers continue to increase, the demand placed on mobile network components to provide remote communication services for such devices and subscribers increases commensurately. To compound this problem, today's mobile devices (e.g., mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc.) can be utilized as full-service computing mechanisms. For example, many of the most recent and advanced mobile devices can be associated with word processing software, web browsing software, electronic mail software, accounting software, and various other types of software. In general, applications heretofore available only by way of computing devices and/or Internet protocol (IP) based network devices are now available on such mobile devices. This expansion in capability of mobile devices can often lead to a desire for higher data rates and higher quality wireless communication. As an example, streaming data services, such as streaming video or streaming audio, can often perform in a more satisfactory manner if a sufficiently high data rate and/or sufficiently high channel quality are available for a wireless link providing the streaming data service.
Although higher data rates are typically sought after, not all wireless service providers provide a common data rate. On the contrary, various service providers can offer a range of bandwidths or data rates for IP-based subscriber traffic, depending on capabilities of the a provider's network. Accordingly, mobile networks typically must accommodate processing and channel bandwidth resources for circuit-switched voice communication as well as packet-switched data communication of various data rates. Various mechanisms for increasing data rates for mobile calls have been implemented. One common way is simply to increase channel bandwidth. However, this is not always a viable result where a network is bandwidth limited, especially in densely populated urban areas. Thus, additional mechanisms for increasing network bandwidth, while preserving network capacity and call quality, are constantly sought after by wireless carriers.